(TRENTON) — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission today issued its second-largest fine against a medical institution, slapping the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center with $227,500 in fines for causing an “unprecedented number” of radiation errors in treating cancer patients.
Federal investigators found that the VA hospital had made significant errors, misplacing radioactive seeds used for treating prostate cancer in 97 of 116 procedures from 2002 to 2008.
Conners (D-Camden), the chairman of the Assembly Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, issued the following statement:
“Discovering that gross medical errors are being made at a hospital is always disturbing; doubly so when that hospital treats the sick men and women who so selflessly serve our country.
“Fortunately for the families of the service men and women involved, the government has decided to hold the hospital and the federal Department of Veterans Affairs responsible for these egregious errors in cancer treatments.
“While the severity of the fine matches the enormity of the mistakes made, it pales in comparison to the human suffering our veterans and their families had to endure. It is my sincere hope that the federal government does not simply stop here; that they work to ensure a mistake of this magnitude can never happen again.”
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